Youtube Clips Led To Arrest

Videos Crucial To Uncovering Teen's Plot, Police Say

March 09, 2007|By VANESSA DE LA TORRE; Courant Staff Writer

NEWINGTON — The star of this YouTube video is a teenage boy wearing glasses and a hooded sweat shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

He is at an outdoor shooting range, shouldering a bolt-action vintage rifle called the Mosin Nagant. He cocks the weapon, aims at a target at least 50 yards away, pulls the trigger to a deafening sound, and shifts the bolt to eject the bullet. He does this again and again. The Russians used the Mosin Nagant in World War II, and some gun enthusiasts consider it a real man's rifle.

In the video, the teen is able to fire five rounds in less than 25 seconds.

Police say the shooter is 16-year-old Frank Fechteler, a Newington High School junior whom they suspect of plotting a Columbine-style massacre at the school and keeping a hit list with at least 20 names of potential victims in a red folder in his bedroom.

According to court documents made public Thursday, Fechteler told investigators that he planned the attack for April 10. In a written statement to police, Fechteler said he would use a semiautomatic rifle or a shotgun to target ``people that had been picking on him for a long time,'' an arrest affidavit said.

The red folder, which police found while searching his Newington home last month, also detailed the alleged plot and other weapons Fechteler planned to use: Molotov cocktails, 10 shrapnel pipe bombs, propane bombs and a car bomb, the affidavit said.

But it was the Mosin Nagant video and four other YouTube clips, showing what police say is Fechteler shooting tactical rifles at an outdoor range in Glastonbury and setting off homemade pipe bombs with a friend, that led investigators to the 16-year-old's plan, according to the affidavit.

Fechteler faces two felony counts of manufacturing bombs and is being held, with bail set at $250,000. He pleaded not guilty to both charges at a hearing March 2 in Superior Court in New Britain. His lawyer, Raul Davila, declined to comment Thursday.

Two days before Fechteler's Feb. 14 arrest, Canton police received a complaint from a 17-year-old girl who was sent the five videos through an online instant message from another Canton teenager, authorities said.

Three of the videos, each less than 30 seconds long, show Fechteler shooting at a long-range target, the affidavit said. Another video shows Fechteler and a friend setting off a copper pipe bomb under a bag of flour in the woods behind the American Radio Relay League headquarters in Newington, according to the affidavit. A fifth video is of the two teens blowing up a 1-inch thick concrete pipe with a 16-gram CO[subscript 2] bomb. The last two videos are listed under YouTube's ``Comedy'' category.

The girl, however, was disturbed by the videos and an accompanying message that she interpreted as a threat to her, the affidavit said. She also told police that she knew since December that the Canton teenager had ``a friend named Frank from Newington and the two had talked of a planned attack on Newington High School,'' according to the affidavit.

Canton police then informed Newington investigators, and on Feb. 13, school Resource Officer William Jordan interviewed Fechteler at Newington High School.

Fechteler, according to the arrest affidavit, admitted to a plan to shoot and kill certain people he didn't like. Fechteler told Jordan that the killing would finally stop ``the only way a person could end it, by shooting myself in the head,'' the affidavit said. The 16-year-old also said he has made more than 40 pipe bombs over the past four years in his home basement, using gunpowder from ammunition and culling materials such as copper and pipes from old appliances in trash bins, according to the affidavit.

With permission from his parents, William and Soon Deok Fechteler, town and state police searched their Stoddard Avenue home for nearly four hours.

In Frank Fechteler's bedroom, investigators found empty shell casings and loose bullet heads, a handwritten note detailing how to make a ``drano bomb,'' and computer printouts on how to make mailbox bombs and generic bombs, along with an ingredient list for 19 types of dynamite and a chemical equivalency list, the affidavit said.

From his closet, authorities also seized a Mossberg 500 12-gauge pump shotgun, the Mosin Nagant bolt-action rifle with a bayonet, and a Saiga semiautomatic .223-caliber rifle, which were registered to the teen's father. The guns appear to be the ones used in the YouTube videos.

They also found the red folder, the affidavit said.

As police searched, Jordan and a detective interviewed Frank Fechteler again, this time in his kitchen. According to the affidavit, Fechteler told them he created and posted the videos under his YouTube username, Uzi4u50, where he identifies himself as ``frank the tank'' and says he wants to enlist in the U.S. Marines in April, the month he turns 17.

Fechteler was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation after the search. The next day, Newington police charged him with manufacturing bombs. Investigators have since interviewed dozens of people and are considering filing additional charges, Lt. William Darby said.

Many of those interviewed are students. Counselors at Newington High School have spoken to those on Fechteler's alleged hit list at least once, Principal Bill Collins said, and will check in with them on a regular basis. Meanwhile, others consider the teen's character.

Ian Schwalenberg, 17, a Newington High junior, said Fechteler wasn't very talkative and hardly participated during class time, but he had friends, and was ``so nice.''

Then, Schwalenberg said, ``one day he just wasn't in our history class.''